Apparently failing to connect with core voters, too

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, September 18, 1996

1996-09-18 04:00:00 PDT CALIFORNIA -- LOS ANGELES - Bob Dole tried to use a baseball reference Wednesday to pitch his anti-drug message to California kids, but stumbled in his delivery.

"The Brooklyn Dodgers had a no-hitter last night. I'm going to follow (that) . . . and we're going to wipe them out between now and Nov. 5," Dole said, eliciting groans and titters from 1,100 students assembled at Chaminade College Prep, a private Catholic high school in West Hills.

The Republican presidential nominee has turned this week to an anti-drug message as a way to invigorate his faltering campaign. During Wednesday's speech he unveiled a slogan for his proposed war on drugs: "Just Don't Do It."

Dole emphasized the issue of drug abuse - and what he said was its glamorization by Hollywood - during the second day of a two-day trip in California.

Dole criticized "Pulp Fiction" and the British film

"Trainspotting" for romanticizing heroin use, adding,

"I have a message to the fashion, music, and film industries, take your influence seriously . . . stop the glorification of slow suicide."

Yet the message, like his reference to Nomo's no-hitter, doesn't seem to be a hit with California voters.

In San Diego Tuesday, Jesse Navarro, a longtime Republican, sat at a coffee bar within sight of Dole's planned speech on crime and drugs, but said he wouldn't walk the two blocks to see his party's candidate.

"I'd see Clinton if he was here," said Navarro, a founder and former president of the San Diego Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "Bottom line, (Clinton's) kept his promises about crime. . . . He has a lot of charisma. To the Latino community, he's seen as a kind of JFK."

With the election just seven weeks away, Navarro should be a Dole booster: He's a 12-year Republican, a former cop with 15 years on the beat, a small-business owner and a member of Republican Mayor Susan Golding's advisory board on Latino issues. He supports Golding and her efforts to cut crime and support business.

But Dole, Navarro said Tuesday, "hasn't reached out to Latinos," and has failed to be convincing on issues like crime and drugs, each a focus of the GOP campaign.

That the politically astute Navarro is still unimpressed by his party's nominee illustrates the core of the trouble enveloping Dole as he wraps up his California trip.

Since the peak of his campaign at the Republican convention here a month ago, Dole has seemingly been met with a yawn by California voters. He lags as many as 20 points behind Clinton in the polls, even further among women, who continue to support the president by a 2-to-1 ratio.

In a speech at the San Diego Civic Center on Tuesday, Dole stood in the shadow of a 16-story county jail construction site and again tried to kick-start his California campaign.

The crowd of several hundred heard Dole promise an administration with a "clear, consistent moral message" on crime and drugs. Gov. Wilson introduced Dole, but Mayor Golding was absent from what was billed as a triumphant return to San Diego.

Dole's speech was undermined by the Clinton administration's release of crime data, indicating that violent crime is at a six-year low.

Clinton's knack for stealing Dole's issues, and his ability to head off any surge for Dole in California, also were dramatized by the president's endorsement Monday by the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest law enforcement union.

Because of such setbacks, Dole's California campaign manager, Ken Khachigian, finds himself having to respond to concerns that the candidate will soon abandon his battle for the state's treasured 54 electoral votes.

Khachigian pointed out that 30 percent of the Dole campaign's national television budget is being spent in California.

On more than a few occasions in his speech, Dole tried to enliven his to-the-point speaking style by harping on phrases to dramatize his themes, often to applause.

On making federal prisoners earn their keep: "And any money they make is going to compensate the victim. The victim, the victim, the victim, the victim."

Jim Lorenz, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego, stood at the back of the crowd listening to Dole attack Clinton's record on fighting drugs at the border. "Bob Dole is absolutely, flat-out wrong," Lorenz said. "There has been more money put at the border (to fight drugs) for years, and it's a very successful program."

Even the undecided voters who Dole's campaign stop had been designed to reach seemed less than impressed with his visit.

"I really would not vote for the guy," said Sam Rapp, 23, who holds a $23-an-hour job as a masonry worker on the construction site next to where Dole was speaking.

Even strong supporters said they were worried about Dole's chances - and his lagging campaign's effect on other Republicans.

"He's running a very poor campaign, and we're very concerned," said John Clifton, a semi-retired businessman who attended the speech. "Clinton has brilliant handlers, and Dole is not hitting the points."

But Bob Gerhart, a real estate assets manager, said Dole had his support - despite his less-flashier image. "I'm 67, I'm retiring, and Dole will be better for us on taxes," he said.

Ric LaPorte, a San Diego city employee who has his own graphics arts business, said he voted for Reagan, Ford and Bush, but as a gay man he's turned off by the GOP's family values stance. He said Dole had done nothing to change his mind.

LaPorte said he cares deeply about issues of crime and drug use in neighborhoods - topics Dole talked about - but didn't think residents in his own neighborhood were buying the Republican's rhetoric. "You don't see the Dole-Kemp signs out there," he said. "The bumper stickers and lawn signs are Clinton-Gore." &lt;